Roberto von Archimboldi

I have some computer questions.

If I fork out £200, the government wants to give me a further £900 for a laptop or a machine with 4GB of RAM. I think that I should take the money. But what should I buy? I would like it to be repairable because I spill things a lot and a modern laptop is not going to go obselete, I think

I need Windows because there is not yet workable voice to text software for Linux. As the government are going to pay for the licence, can I run windows in a virtual machine inside, say, Debian? Would that stop windows spying on everything else I do?

I would like a three button mouse because then I can use the middle button as a drag lock.

I am happy to buy refurbished machines but I feel like at that price I will be able to buy some that goes whiz-bang and that sounds fun.

#Laptops, #Debian, #AdviceNeeded , #ConsumerQuestions

Feb 26 at 9:45amWeb
Show threadMair A-WFeb 26
@RobertoArchimboldi you can certainly run windows in a virtualbox VM in Debian, but I think you need a lot more than 4gb of RAM to do so usefully. I don't know about the other questions but running Windows in a VM will only stop windows spying on what you're doing to the extent you're doing it outside the VM, so I suppose it depends what you plan to do with the machine besides your Windows applications...
Show threadRoberto von ArchimboldiFeb 26
@mair thank you. I know that RAM now costs an arm and a leg, but how much would I need? Looking at the internet, I think that I ought to be able find something with 16GB for that price
Show threadMair A-WFeb 26
@RobertoArchimboldi my refurbished Lenovo cost me EUR 333 in 2024, and it's got 32GB of RAM. Windows is... OK.
Show threadRoberto von ArchimboldiFeb 26
@mair where did you buy it from?
Show threadMair A-WFeb 26
@RobertoArchimboldi amazon marketplace. (the seller seems to be this company https://belco24.de/Notebooks/Lenovo/ThinkPad )
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Show threadRoberto von ArchimboldiFeb 26
@mair thank you
Show threadMair A-WFeb 26
@RobertoArchimboldi i guess bear in mind that if you take the virtualbox route, the VM can only be allocated about half, max 2/3 of the RAM and processing power. So i have 32GB and two processors, but Windows has 24GB and one. I dont know what specs Windows 11 recommends these days...
Show threadRoberto von ArchimboldiFeb 26
@mair thank you. That is very helpful
Show threadmilagemayvaryFeb 26

@RobertoArchimboldi

You could get away with 8GB of ram, install zram on debian for RAM compression to get double usable memory with default settings.

16GB of physical memory would be ideal though,  is memory hungry & it's likely as Win11 ages it'll be demanding more ram.

Show threadRoberto von ArchimboldiFeb 26
@milagemayvary that sounds clever. It also seems that whatever I do, I am going to need more than 4GB of RAM
Show threadmilagemayvaryFeb 26

@RobertoArchimboldi

Likely.

For  a strict 4GB of ram in a desktop system is criminal in 2026.

You would likely max out after opening up a browser & an electron based app or maybe something like MS Word/Excell + browser.